separation of microparticles using dielectrophoresis-assisted inertial microfluidics: a lattice boltzmann simulation

In this study, we have simulated the dynamics of microparticles in a straight microchannel in the presence of an inhomogeneous oscillating electric field by immersed boundary method in combination with the lattice boltzmann navier-stokes solver and the lattice boltzmann method for solving the poisson equation# we have examined the effect of the electric field on the location and number of particle equilibrium positions# in the absence of the electric field, circular particles migrate to two stable equilibrium positions, depending on their sizes# by application of the electric field with high frequency, equilibrium positions change# for each particle, there exists a specific voltage so-called crossover voltage at which the equilibrium position near electrodes disappear, and particles migrate to the other equilibrium position far from the electrodes# the upper equilibrium position is not influenced by the electric field# finally, we have introduced a novel two-step dep-assisted inertial microfluidics mechanism for particle separation, based on the crossover voltages and crossover frequencies of different particles#